JimsKnight

the BBC did a 1 hour program on Bang Kwang Prison, it was on YouTube but not anymore...;-(

I've watched that. Terrifying and frightening!

Looked ok to me. Pretty relaxed in fact, apart from the cramped sleeping rooms (if you didn't have money to pay for a bigger room).

If you got the chance to go there with someone during visiting hours I trust you will change your opinion within seconds...

Do you know how that prison is called in Thai? Big Tiger. The Tiger will eat all!

Read the book from an Australian guy who spent 16 years in this h_ell and survived

trust his name was Warren Fellows: The damage done.

W. Fellows admitted in that book he was indeed guilty!

Read the book. But conditions are said to of improved from the 70s and 80s when fellows was getting led about on his leash.

2009 means even the thai prisons have moved up a notch or two.

This Irish fella obviously didn't find his pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, just the prison gates!

US and Chinese campaigns for their citizens to buy only local products have also made it more difficult to boost Thai exports, he explained.

Begining to look eerily similar to the protectionism that occured during the Great Depression

Nothing wrong with that if it's done right.

You can't spend your way out of a recession, unless you want to prolong the pain that is...

I had my maid dig a bottomless pit in front of my house. It took a while to finish, but was well worth the effort. Nobody parks there now. If you don't want to make such an effort, or are worried at losing your wife down t'pit, as I did mine, you can simply dig a hole 2m deep and fill it with water. Someone will think it's just a puddle and park there, allowing you to come along later and park on their roof.

All well and good if it's not concrete...

But a good tactic otherwise...

I did the Bangkok - Phuket and back on the wrong bus. My backside was sore for a week either side of the journey.

Mate, you want to try the Sungai Kolok to Chumpon slow train!

Near 12 hours on a wooden bench and it stopped seemingly every 5 minutes!

The only foreigner (usually a good thing) except the rabble that seemed to be getting on were nothing I'd experienced in 10 years of travelling Thailand!

There's a 7 year age gap between then couple as well, with her being an older woman.

According to the news article they were first married when he was a young dude of 24 and she was 30!!

So much for the stereotype of an older sugar daddy and his candy girl!

Never had a problem myself.

Neither have I. Lived in Pattaya for 2 months and didn't have one run-in with the BIB.

Must be lucky I guess cause some folks seem to be taking 'hits' on these scams.

OK maybe this will make you feel better.

A few years ago near that intersection I came down the soi and was turning onto Beach Rd. My motobike had a good grip on rear of seat for putting on the stand. Anyway I was looking for traffic up Beach Rd so I could pull out. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a ladyboy decending to rear of my motobike. I could feel the LB grip the hand grip on back of seat. I then sped up and could hear the high heel shoes clacking on the pavement. I went extremely fast and could see in my rear view mirror the LB bust their ass. A great satisfaction came over me.

Now you have warned us and I will be looking for this type of scam. I will now drive off if able to prevent such an occurance.

Thank You Very BIG

Heh, one of the reasons I like my CBR is there's no footpegs for a pillion passenger unless you know how to unclip them from underneath the back fairing

If a lady I've brought back to my bike see's there's no pegs she sulks, until I unclip them from the recess and it's all smiles again

When did Pakistan, Somalia and Nigeria become part of the EU?

Try moving to Slough or Brixton and come back with the same opinion, but maybe you want to live in a area that is polluted with 3rd world immigrants where its unsafe to walk home during the day or at night.

If i had the money an area in England where predominantly English live isnt too much to ask for, or are you lefts fascist globalists going to deny me this right.

Wow - and some here think that Thais are xenophobic

No, he's being nationalistic, which is what runs though the veins of most of thai countrymen and women we see around Thailand

If you were given 100,000,000 baht (tax free) would you still live in Thailand? I ask the question to see if people live in Thailand because of income reasons, or if they had enough money would they live somewhere else.

The beauty of the culture and the people might outweigh the perceived benefits of living in a more developed country for some people. Others may feel that modern amenities would be nicer. How would you decide?

For 500,000,000 baht maybe I'd relocate somewhere nearby.

is it hard for a foreigner to date a Chinese Thai girl?

Wealth, duration, location, luck and personal details all are factors.

Get the combination right and off you groove

I think Thai girls are more independently minded, in general, compared to the Thai-Chinese ones.

It is a kick-in-the-pants, fun-forum, with huge amounts of humor

Not in the Phuket sub-forum, it isn't.

Apparently, humour is frowned upon there.

Sir Burrs usual knightly humour perhaps?

The interviewer tanked it by not asking many hard questions (and allowing him to deflect those that he did ask), and it looks like the I/V was undertaken by e mail, which is always a lazy cop out for an interviewer (though I do it myself sometimes!!).

It was good to see the elusive George fly down from his ivory tower and reveal some of the inner secrets of TV like that.

It certainly wasn't hard talk but then George isn't a politician either who needs to be blasted about like that.

I think if you fire too much hard talk it starts to get personal and a bit unfair.

I didn't know the unleashing of the adverts was because of server overload and TV needing its own servers to cope with increased traffic.

I just figured George and crew were having an 'empire moment' one day in Bangkok and went for it that way.

So seeing this other side to the argument was interesting and changed my view of the advert angle a bit.

I liked the stats and geographical traffic stuff, up and up they seem to go!

Those are levels my frugal websites could only dream of.

Pretty good stuff.

My favourite bike to ride so far has got to be my late Kwak ZX12R, fast, big, blue, and it just felt safe to be on it. Thais were also scared of it because of its size... I loved it...

I will try to find a picture of it and post it here on Monday.

What bikes do you like? Any special bikes that you have been on for a few minutes and just loved/hated?

A sports tourers are cool. You've got the stability and control to just load up and get going.

Hate bikes with half-farings and 'naked' bikes. Something for the posing peters.

Next time try a tractor or a cement truck for more of a challenge.

Do they have a top speed exceeding a 3.0L TDI pick-up? If so, bring it on!

A good many vehicles have a top speed exceeding a diesel pick-up, after all the gearing only allows 180-200km/h at redline in 5th gear.

A good many is a broad brush to bandy about my aryan friend.

Overtaking a vehicle doing 180 - 200 kph on substandard Thai roads with side roads hither and thither is no mean feat.

You need to understand a CBR 400 is restricted to about 220 kph or so. This gives you a very narrow margin of speed to overcome a flat-out 3.0L TDI pick-up

With undertaking at slower speed of 80 kph using a bikes inherent advantage of narrow width versus bulky cars and trucks the safer option was to use guile as opposed to raw power

the truck kept on overtaking and slowing down...the truck slowed down because there was slower moving traffic infront and he had no chance of over taking. I don't think he was taunting you, you are thinking too much.

You have to understand, that very driver had been tailing, overtaking and slowing down for the past 10 minutes or so.

This wasn't shown on the video cause it would of been even longer to upload.

Some posters on here and youtube are already fussed about 3 minutes or so of their lives being 'wasted' by watching this clip Bless their precious minds!

JK, I can't work out why you didnt round him up on the left hand side in the first 10 seconds .

I know man, I had chances sooner but I was 2 weeks into the tour, had been on the road for ages and was being a bit cagey.

I also had a bad vibe about overtaking him on a clear stretch for him to be on my tail. People may slag me off for overtaking on the inside, but the call was a fair one and after I did so he had no way of getting to me without trying to ram aside cars and other pick-ups

Now that the East is growing, how are they going to build it? Will it be built based on the old model of Western capitalism,

or are there enough forward-thinking people here to build a better model of society and economy?

With a bucket and spade and a dose of Sanuuk to keep the men happy

The east is already built, Mcfly.

Capitalism already is here, has been for decades, centuries in one form or another.

It's tried and tested, stood the test of time...

C'mon £ vs baht. Up you go, up tiddly-up-up-up

Next time try a tractor or a cement truck for more of a challenge.

Do they have a top speed exceeding a 3.0L TDI pick-up? If so, bring it on!

So sorry for stealing your precious life energy there mate. It's not meant to be ghost rider so keep your panties on there

Basically if you pause and read it this pick-up driver kept overtaking and slowing down, taunting me. He didn't like bikers very much.

So I had to get past him and away to end this pricks attitude.

Yeah he was a moron, but what can you do when you're a lone biker a zillion miles away from home-base?

Most of you won't have a clue having not bike toured miles away from home and been harryed by pick-up drivers so I understand your ignorance.

Hope so, people should be given the right to choose for themselves, not some suit in an office.

Looks pretty neat, might give it a try

Or just stop in Rannong and get a taxi to the Andaman club ,its about 1000baht all in , taxi maybe 200 or 300 baht for taxi. from Phuket you can get a bus to Rannong its about 3 hours , there are many Visa runs from Phuket .

If you are travelling independently the Andaman Club is by FAR the most pleasant way to get a a stamp. And particularly if it is raining, or waves or the sun is beating down relentlessly. The longtailboat ride can be horrible. No cover at all. It is now the rainy season too, so the risk is quite high that bad weather can develop.

Last time I went it was about 500 Baht which, provided you like drinking wine or smoking cigarettes, you can recover in the duty free shop.

I dont know when you last went.. But when I went a few months ago the club no longer could process overstay and my buddy who recently did a run said you can no longer check out from there !! You have to check out at the 'new' stamp out place at the long tail jump off, they put some paper in the passport and you then return to the club..

Cant say if this is permanent, or was only for a few days.. but he said it had killed the club custom and suspected someone hadnt made their brown envelope payment. If that remains the same the club is dead as why go do all the nasty to then go further to pay more..

Interesting development, I buzzed through Ranong Pier in January time more than likely the dearth of tourists going there had an impact.

More people watching their baht now can't afford the fringe-benefits of Andaman I guess...

According to Theravada, are we born with defilements? Are we considered as being born with a "pure mind" or not?

We're born imperfect, we die imperfect - such are the ways of life.

Why do farangs do that funny invisible walk, posture, starey things and are more focused on ignoring you than acknowledging you with a nod or hello! when walking towards another farang in an un touristy area?

It has happend countless times too me but i have just had it happen while walking back home and have remembered to ask about it.

I have just passed another farang and we were walking towards each other for over 100 yds and as we got closer it was quite obvious he was doing the i cannot see you walk... ... i looked, nodded and said hello as we passed while he scratched his ear to avoid making contact....

why do people feel the need to do this?

Why do people feel the need to post banal threads about something they ought to just get over and deal with, rather than whine about on TV.

The farangs who live in Thailand are usually wanting to steer away from other farangs, they're in their bubble and don't like intrusion. So that's their groove.